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This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This'll just take a minute.

It sounds like something out of a bad science fiction novel. During World War II, a fungus¹ called Tricoderma reesei ate its way through US military uniforms and tents in the South Pacific. It chewed up the cloth and used special enzymes² to convert the indigestible cellulose into simple sugars. Now that infamous³ fungus is getting some good publicity⁴. It looks like it might hold a key to improving the production of biofuels. Scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory published a paper on the fungus’s genetic⁵ sequence in this week’s Nature Biotechnology. The organism uses a surprisingly small number of genes⁶ to produce its cellulose-munching enzymes. Scientists say this means its production is extremely efficient. They hope to capitalize on the genetic information to find more efficient and cheaper ways to break down cellulose for ethanol in biofuel production. That cellulose could come from a native plant like switchgrass, or even from municipal waste. And fuel from waste, say scientists, is a more carbon-neutral way to power our cars.  Which might make veterans forgive the fungus that ate their shirts.

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Cynthia Graber.